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There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth ... namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and the concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge.

Roger Bacon

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Roger Bacon
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More quotes by Roger Bacon

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Argument is conclusive, but it does not remove doubt.
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Neglect of mathematics work injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or things of this world. And what is worst, those who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance, and so do not seek a remedy.
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The conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages.
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It is easier for a man to burn down his own house than to get rid of his prejudices.
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The calendar is intolerable to all wisdom, the horror of all astronomy, and a laughing stock from a mathematician's point of view.
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Argument is conclusive, but it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.
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There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.
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Mathematics is the gate and key to science.
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A little learning is a dangerous thing but none at all is fatal.
Roger Bacon
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For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns. His hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.
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Cease to be ruled by dogmas and authorities look at the world!
Roger Bacon
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All science requires mathematics. [Editors' summary of Bacon's idea, not Bacon's wording.]
Roger Bacon
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One man alone had really known the sciences, namely, Robert, Bishop of Lincoln.
Roger Bacon
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It is not necessarily impossible for human beings to fly, but it so happens that God did not give them the knowledge of how to do it. It follows, therefore, that anyone who claims that he can fly must have sought the aid of the devil. To attempt to fly is therefore sinful.
Roger Bacon
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But we must here state that we should not see anything if there were a vacuum. But this would not be due to some nature hindering species, and resisting it, but because of the lack of a nature suitable for the multiplication of species for species is a natural thing, and therefore needs a natural medium but in a vacuum nature does not exist.
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... mathematics is absolutely necessary and useful to the other sciences.
Roger Bacon
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[I]f in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics, in so far as disposed through it we are able to reach certainty in other sciences and truth by the exclusion of error.
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To ask the proper question is half of knowing.
Roger Bacon
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There are two modes of knowledge: through argument and through experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but it does not cause certainty nor remove doubts that the mind may rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience.
Roger Bacon
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For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.
Roger Bacon